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Sir John Godsalve by Hans Holbein the Younger
Summary
Portrait of Sir John Godsalve. Black and coloured chalks, watercolour and bodycolour, brush, pen and ink on pink-primed paper, 36.7 × 29.6 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle.
Holbein had painted John Godsalve with his father, Thomas, in 1528, during his first vsiit to England. When he returned in 1532, the younger Godsalve—a rising man in the bureaucracy of Thomas Cromwell—was among the first of those he painted. Godsalve had become Clerk of the King's Signet in 1531, and was appointed to the Office of Common Meter of Precious Tissues the following year. He went on to become Comptroller of the Royal Mint.
The unusually dense working of this drawing gives it a more finished appearance than most of Holbein's studies, but it was nonethless probably done in preparation for an oil painting that has not survived. Signs of a later hand have been detected in the finish. Godsalve's glance towards the viewer is typical of Holbein's experiments with eye direction in his portraits of the early 1530s.
References
Susan Foister, Holbein in England, London: Tate, 2006, ISBN 1854376454, p. 50.
John Rowlands, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, Boston: David R. Godine, 1985, ISBN 0879235780, pp. 119–20.
Hans Holbein the Younger was a German painter and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style, and is considered one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire, and Reformation propaganda, and he made a significant contribution to the history of book design.
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